


Gang Aft Agley

by Mireille



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-11
Updated: 2003-04-11
Packaged: 2018-08-16 09:50:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8097541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: This is not the life Molly Weasley wanted for herself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before the publication of OOTP, and, as it's in the last three books that we find out anything about Molly Weasley except as "Ron's mum," it is therefore Super Duper Not Canon Compliant. (I did change Molly's maiden name to fit the books, but that's not much.)

Molly tells Arthur that the reason she does the washing up in the Muggle fashion some nights is that she finds it soothing: a dull mechanical task that leaves her mind free to wander. And that's true, as far as it goes, but there are a hundred things Molly could be doing that are more necessary and just as repetitive.

The reason she chooses to scrub the pots and pans by hand, of all the possible chores she could be doing, is that the sound of water running obscures the sounds of her crying. She doesn't do it every night, or every week, or even every month, these days; but some nights, she just can't stand it. 

Some nights, something happens to remind her just how different this life is than anything she'd ever wanted for herself, and if she doesn't at least let herself cry about it, she thinks she might snap entirely, leave Arthur and the children and run away somewhere, change her name and pretend she'd never heard of Ottery St. Catchpole. 

She never wanted any of this. She never wanted children--not even one child, and certainly not seven of them. Not that she didn't love them all--she did, but.... But she hadn't wanted them. Hadn't wanted to spend the better part of the past twenty-five years kissing scraped knees, patching robes, breaking up squabbles, and being reduced to nothing more than a name to shriek--and not even her name, just "MUM!"--when someone had pushed things a bit too far. 

She hadn't always been someone's mother. She'd been Molly Prewett once, who'd got nine NEWTs and had a flair for languages, and had gone to work for the Ministry of Magic as an interpreter and translator--spells were good enough for ordinary letters, but the spoken word and sensitive documents required a human touch. 

She'd been destined to go far, everyone had told her, and Molly had always beamed, and thanked them, and gone back to work.

Then she'd been asked to do some translation work for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, and she'd met Arthur Weasley. Well, met him again; she remembered him from school. He'd been three or four years ahead of her, but he'd played Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and she remembered watching him play. 

Working with him, she discovered that he was clever--most of the time--and funny, and generally reckoned to be Going Places, and so when he invited her to have dinner with him one night, she didn't hesitate to accept. 

And six months later, when he asked her to marry him, she still didn't hesitate to say yes. They'd be perfect together, she thought.

Then two things happened: she'd gotten pregnant with Bill, and rumors started coming in about a group of Dark wizards calling themselves "Death Eaters," who'd been attacking Muggles and Muggleborn wizards. 

By the time Molly would have gone back to work after Bill's birth, she was already pregnant a second time, and Arthur had already turned down a promotion that would move him out of the Muggle Artifacts office.

"I can't, Molly," he'd said, running a hand through his already-thinning hair. "They need someone there who really cares about this, someone who'll stand up against those bigots and make sure their anti-Muggle policies don't make it into law."

She'd agreed, of course, because she'd always respected Arthur's principles, but she had to admit, to herself at least, that the promotion would have improved their financial situation quite a bit, especially now that she had taken so much time away from work. 

And then Charlie was born, and the political situation turned ugly enough that Arthur suggested she just stay home with the boys because of the difficulty in finding someone truly trustworthy who could take care of them. Arthur had been making himself very unpopular with some of the people at the Ministry, and the more open the Death Eaters' activities became, the more he worried that someone might try to get at Bill and Charlie to coerce Arthur into weakening the Muggle Protection Act that he'd been working to get passed.

Reluctantly, Molly had agreed; she hadn't liked the idea, but it seemed like their best choice. Then the war had begun in earnest, and then Percy was born, and by the time You-Know-Who had been defeated, she'd found herself with seven children--five still quite small--and language skills that had gone rusty from long disuse. 

And what did it matter, really, if she could speak eight languages, if all she ever got to say was "Fred Weasley, don't you dare tie that to the cat!" and "George, leave your brother alone!"

Now they were older, of course, but she was even more out of practice with her languages, and it really didn't seem to matter any more. Arthur thought she was happy with things the way they were--and really, most of the time, she honestly was. She'd got used to this life, and she loved Arthur, loved the boys, loved Ginny--and she wouldn't trade them for the world, not really.

So most nights, Molly waves her wand to get the plates clean, and goes out to sit with Arthur and work on her knitting while they listen to "Witching Hour" on the WWN. 

But some nights, she remembers being Molly Prewett, who'd dreamed of greatness, and wonders what she'd think of Molly Weasley, the harried mother whose most recent accomplishments included the alteration of a set of Hogwarts robes for the sixth time in as many years and the stretching of five Sickles to do the work of fifteen--and those are the nights that she stands over the kitchen sink and cries.


End file.
